You asked for it: Ubuntu officially on the Precision M3800 worldwide

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You asked for it: Ubuntu officially on the Precision M3800 worldwide

A year ago, I published a blog post about running Ubuntu on the Precision M3800. Being involved in Project Sputnik and a life-long Linux user, I knew that this is a system Linux users would love, so I thought I'd make their job of getting the M3800 up and running a little easier. Since then, that blog post has seen 40,000 views, with a follow-up post to it receiving 10,000 views. Since my blog post, aside from the view count, we've received an overwhelming response from the community desiring an officially supported product. With the momentum we've built, I'm proud to say that the Precision M3800 is joining the XPS 13 Developer Edition as its official big brother. Oh, and I should note that the XPS 13 DE, now in its fourth generation, is more svelte than ever. The fourth generation XPS 13 DE will be available for sale soon.

As the M3800 is in the Precision line, it's possible for us to offer this system out of the gate with Ubuntu as a build to order offering worldwide. That means that you will have a full range of configuration options. I'd like to say thank you to the Precision product marketing team for enthusiastically helping with this launch. Note that their Precision M4800 and M6800 systems already have been orderable with Ubuntu or RHEL for some time. (Want a mobile workstation with full RAID 5 and 32GB of RAM? Dell's got you covered.)

The refresh of the M3800 now has an optional UHD "4K" display in addition to the base FHD option. That's up from the previous QHD+ display. Additionally, the latest Precision M3800 adds hardware support for Thunderbolt 2.0. Because our Ubuntu factory installs only ship Ubuntu LTS releases, we were not able to ship with official Thunderbolt support. However, thanks to the hardware-enablement stack in Ubuntu, starting with upcoming Ubuntu 14.04.2, you will be able to upgrade your kernel to add some Thunderbolt support. We plan to be working with Canonical to recertify the Precision M3800 with official Thunderbolt support.

So, do you want a system running Linux? Dell has more client and server systems certified with Ubuntu than anyone else. For me, as a lifelong Linux user, the choice is clear.

But the prices are atrocious. Is it that Microsoft have somehow forced you not to sell Linux computers at competitive prices, or is Dell happy to charge people more for the "privilege" of having a free OS pre-installed?

Mark the lad: You mean how the price is $101.50 less than the Windows version? And that Canonical makes money on each system to, y'know, support the development they do? Did you actually look at the price?